Return to Archive -by date - by topic - 2007.
A fellow transport journalist ‘phones apoplectic with frustration. He has been trying to book return tickets for a meeting in Birmingham – First Class out, Standard home'
After 15 minutes on the National Rail website he has just found the fares he needs and been told to ‘choose your carrier'. He chooses Virgin and finds he has to key in his details again on another web-site. Cue phone call to the Modern Railways counselling service.
After 15 minutes our work is done, he can cope alone. Later we hear the full story. The subsequent 35 minutes saw the web site crash twice when he clicked ‘buy'.
With no e-mail confirmation, our colleague assumes that the transaction has failed and books by telephone – mysteriously saving £2.85. Then two more sets of tickets arrive. It takes 17 minutes on an 0870 number to sort out the confusion.
One of our writers reports from a deserted Kings Cross on his way home a Saturday evening. Shops and food stalls are closed. Feral minicab touts roam the empty concourse offering to take passengers to Peterborough or even Sheffield . Has a film company taken over the station for the latest movie about some dystopic future – Night of the Zombie Regulators? No, just the normal closure of the ECML every weekend in April and May.
On another Saturday a young Russian approaches one of our team on the Northbound platform at Kings Cross Thameslink. He has a neatly printed itinerary provided by his company, but can't understand how the 14.33 to Bedford is going to get him to Newark, the last stage of a journey that began in Vladivostok.
How to explain that on Saturday you get to Newark by going to Luton and catching a bus to Peterborough ? Since he works for an engineering firm we assume he is an engineer and draw a simple route diagram, then put a cross through the ECML between Peterborough and London .
Instant enlightenment. Just to make sure we print ‘BUS REPLACEMENT SERVICE' on his itinerary and suggest he looks out for it on a notice when he gets off at Luton . ‘I will never forget you' he says as we bid farewell.
James – this is your experience Meanwhile yet another staffer is trying to book tickets using his partner's (ooh PC!!) gold season ticket. Sadly we left the gold standard decades ago, The web site crashes repeatedly.
Keen to promote rail travel, a columnist persuades a work colleague to buy book-ahead tickets for trip from Manchester to London . Arriving at the station with 20 minutes to spare the colleague finds that there is no record of the purchase in the ticket on departure machine. ‘You'll have to buy new tickets', he is told.
There is a theme running though these experiences, which can be summed up in the vernacular as ‘Sod the customer'. And there is a lot of it around from Network Rail's seemingly institutionalised five day a week railway to ticket inspectors on trains apparently in training to qualify for a job with the pioneer if aggressive inflexibility, Ryanair.
In truth, it starts at the top, where DfT Rail is giving new meaning to Douglas Jay's remark that ‘the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves'. From timetabling to the Intercity Express Programme we see a soviet style Ministry of Railways lurking behind the smoke and mirrors of 21st Century politics.
Thus while there is consultation on replacement franchises, what the Government has finally decided to buy on our behalf, as expressed in the Invitation To Tender ( ITT ) issued to the franchise bidders, has been withheld from the passenger on the self evidently spurious ground that it contains commercially sensitive information.
In truth, the ITT is politically sensitive and its release might encourage the man in the street to protest that the gentleman in Whitehall does not know much at all. Such sophistry is all of a piece with the Government funded body which suggested that councils should not implement plans for fortnightly rubbish collection until after the May local elections, lest the populace make it a political issue. Oh yes, and call it ‘alternate week collection'.
Fortunately, although it is under threat by the Government which brought it in, we have the Freedom of Information Act. The RMT Union asked for the final ITT for the Integrated Kent Franchise back in February 2005 and the good news is that the Government has finally caved in after a long battle.
Now RMT has asked for the ITTs for the four franchises currently being let. DfT Rail is to undertake an ‘urgent review' with a view to publishing them ‘as soon as possible'. This will no doubt be regarded as ‘unhelpful' by the Minster House apparatchiks, but is a major success on behalf of the customer.
Meanwhile, back on the railway, what can be done to create a service led industry when information technology doesn't fulfil and Network Rails obsessive need to dig up the tracks while pledging adherence to the seven day a week railway comes straight out of ‘1984'?
Yes, we know that irate TOC MDs will point to Wi-Fi fitted carriages and Black Berry equipped train staff, but as our retelling of a few weeks' of frustration shows, at the passenger/railway interface customer care often doesn't work. And random route closures only put more pressure on staff and travelers
Speaking of his company GE, the legendary Jack Welch said that such a big organization could handle only one really big idea every five years. The seven day a week railway is about as big as ideas come for Network Rail. Perhaps that should be the theme behind the next Control Period.
As for the TOCs, work is already underway to simplify the complex and proliferating range of fares. Forget smartcards outside the conurbations. The one big idea should be a straightforward structure applied universally across all operators.
Being able to buy a good value ticket, whether book ahead or walk on, and know that it won't be an extended bus journey at weekends, is not asking much by Continental railway standards. We live in hope